2011-10-24, Sight Report

Ankeny, backyard at home
2011/10/24 21:00 – 2011/10/25 01:00 CST

63F, semi-humid atmosphere. Clear skies, no clouds cover.
Transparency was fair, but seeing was quite poor.
Some atmospheric disturbance causing issues at high magnification.
Had trouble getting any sharp focus, even on stars with the 9mm EP at high mags, most likely due to the temperature variations causing poor seeing.

What I saw:

* NGC 869
Equipment: Zhumell Z10 10″ Newtonian reflector
Double cluster near Cassiopeia, the brightest visible stars in one of the clusters looked somewhat like a gingerbread man shape.

* NGC 884
Equipment: Zhumell Z10 10″ Newtonian reflector
Double cluster near Cassiopeia

* M13
Equipment: Zhumell Z10 10″ Newtonian reflector
Hercules globular cluster – low on horizon, could see it as a dim ball taking up about 1/4 of the eyepiece diameter, very difficult to resolve any stars in core (277x)

* M57
Equipment: Zhumell Z10 10″ Newtonian reflector
Ring nebula in Lyra – somewhat blurry, but could discern shape and doughnut ring with dark core. Did not see central star. At 83x was just discernable as a fuzzy dim doughnut, at 277x it was a dim doughnut, no more detail, taking up about 1/6 – 1/8 of the eyepiece diameter.

* Jupiter
Equipment: Zhumell Z10 10″ Newtonian reflector
Moons more spread out tonight. On was peeking out directly behind the planet on right side. Very little discernible detail besides the main equatorial color banding, quite blurry at high mags (poor seeing)* Still unsuccessful in finding M33.

* M31
Equipment: Zhumell Z10 10″ Newtonian reflector
Could not find M31! I think was just dumb, or the seeing was so poor that I couldn’t find the disc.